GOING TO SEA.
Eight years later I shipped “before the mast” on the A 1 first-class
clipper _Wizard_ bound from New York to San Francisco.
When I made up my mind to become a sailor, I had tried several of this
world’s callings and seemed to find none suitable. I had asked counsel
of several elderly gentlemen in my native village as to the best way of
securing all things needful during my sojourn in this world. They said
many wise and good things. They looked wise and good. But really the
wordy help they offered was unsatisfactory. So I cut the knot myself and
said I would be a sailor. I explained to my male and female friends that
I felt myself destined for a maritime career. I needed more excitement
than could be got out of a shore humdrum life. The sea was the place for
enterprising youthful Americans. The American merchant marine needed
American officers and sailors. All heard me and agreed. No doubt it was
the best thing. And I talked on and they agreed with all my arguments.
How people will agree with you when it’s all one to them what you do! I
was eighteen and in most respects a fool, including this--that I did not
know it.
The _Wizard_, on which I shipped with five other boys from my native
town, was a first-class clipper. She was a fine thing to look at from a
distance, either as she lay at anchor, the tracery of her spars and
rigging in relief against the sky, or speeding along under studding
sails rigged out on both sides. But once on board and inside her
symmetrical lines, things were not so beautiful. Those white, cloud-like
sails tore men’s fingers as, hard and heavy with ice or snow, the
sailors tried to furl them. Those graceful tapering yards, supporting
the studding sails, strained and half-crushed men’s backs when lowered
and toted about the deck. There were wooden belaying-pins, iron
marline-spikes and other miscellaneous things to fling at men’s heads by
those in authority. Those cobweb-like ropes had hard, thick ends lying
coiled on deck to lash men’s bodies.
We, the six boys, were obliged to leave our native heaths because there
wasn’t room for us on them to earn our bread and clothes. We were not
clearly aware of this at the time, though an unspoken sentiment
prevailed there, as it does in most of the older settled States, that
the young man must move away to “seek his fortune.” Ten years previous
we should have entered the whaling service. But the whale fishery had
utterly failed. Once it was the outlet for nearly all the brawn and
muscle of our island.
The Captain of the _Wizard_ was from our native town. Therefore myself
and the five other boys had shipped under him, expecting special favors.
A mistake. Never sail under a Captain who knows your folks at home. You
have no business to expect favoritism; he has no business to grant it.
I was the last of the six young lubbers to leave the town for New York.
On the morning of my departure the mothers, sisters, and other female
relatives of the five who had gone before discovered many other things
which they deemed necessary for the urchins to carry on the voyage. So
they bore down on me with them, and I bade most of these good people an
earthly farewell, loaded down, in addition to my own traps, with an
assorted cargo of cakes, sweetmeats, bed quilts, Bibles, tracts, and one
copy of “Young’s Night Thoughts” for the boys.
I ate my last dinner as a free man at a Broadway restaurant, and then I
went to the wharf where the ship lay. Already the tug was alongside,
preparatory to hauling her out in the stream. I went up the plank and
over the side. A gentleman in authority asked me, as I stepped on deck,
if I belonged to the ship. I said I did. “Take off those togs, then, put
on your working duds and turn to, then,” he remarked. The togs went off.
I put on my canvas pants and flannel shirt, the garb of sea servitude.
Henceforth I was a slave. The ship just then was not a Sunday-school nor
a Society for Ethical Culture. It was a howling pandemonium of oaths and
orders. Fully one-third of the able seamen had not recovered from their
closing-out shore spree, and had tumbled into their berths or were
sprawled on deck drunk. Cargo in cases, bales, boxes, and barrels was
still rattled over the bulwarks and into the hold. Everybody seemed to
be swearing--first, each one on his own, private account, and secondly,
all in one general chorus for mutual purposes. Many people seemed in
command. I couldn’t distinguish the officers of the ship from the
stevedores. Still officers continued to turn up everywhere, and each
officer ordered me to some particular and separate duty.
The world looked pretty black to me then. I wished there was some way
out of it. On shore the period between the foremast hand and the
position of Captain was only the duration of a thought. Here it was an
eternity. Day dreams are short, real experience is long. But all this is
often in youth a difficult matter to realize.
There came along a short, stout man with a deeper voice and more
sonorous oath than anybody else. This was the fourth and last mate. It
was a relief to find at last the end of the mates and to know the exact
number of men legitimately entitled to swear at me. This gentleman for a
season concentrated himself entirely on me. He ordered me with a broom
and scraper into the ship’s pig-pen, which he argued needed cleaning.
This was my first well-defined maritime duty. It was a lower round of
the ladder than I had anticipated. It seemed in its nature an occupation
more bucolic than nautical. I would have preferred, also, that
compliance with the order had not been exacted until the ship had left
the wharf, because there were several shore visitors on board, and among
them two of my intimate friends who had come to see me off. There they
stood, in all the bravery of silk hats and fashionably-cut attire,
conversing on terms of equality with the first mate. They could talk
with him on the weather or any subject. I, by virtue of my inferior
position, was not at liberty to speak to this potentate at all.
I jumped into the pig-pen. Thus destiny, despite our inclinations,
forces down our throats these bitter pills. The fourth mate was not more
than a year my senior. He stood over me during the entire process and
scolded, cursed, and commanded. My shore friends looked on from afar and
grinned. Already they saw the great social chasm which yawned between me
and them, and governed their actions accordingly. Already did they
involuntarily patronize me. It requires a wise man to detect the
wickedness and deceit in his own nature. Probably I should have
similarly acted had our positions been reversed. The mate was very
particular. He made me sweep and scrape every corner with an elaborate
and painful accuracy. He sent me into the pig’s house to further perfect
the work. I was obliged to enter it in an almost recumbent position. The
pig ran out disgusted. I scraped his floor in a similar mood. Thus
commenced life on the ocean wave.
But I got even with the mate. Destiny made me my own involuntary avenger
of the indignity put upon me. By indignity I don’t mean the cleaning of
the pig-pen. That was an honorable, though menial occupation--at least
in theory. Cincinnatus on his farm may have done the same thing. But I
do mean the scurrility and abuse the young officer bestowed on me, while
I did my best to execute his bidding.
I hauled the young man overboard about three minutes afterward, but he
never knew I did it, and I never allowed myself to think of the
occurrence while on shipboard, for fear the powers of the air might
ventilate the matter. It came about in this way: A line was passed
through a hawse-hole forward to the tug, which was puffing, fretting,
fuming, and churning with her screw the mud-ooze and garbage floating in
the slip into a closer fusion. My friend the mate stood on the
fore-chains with the end of the heavy rope in both hands, trying to
pass it to those on the tug. This line running through the hawse-hole
aft was lying near where I stood. Some one called out: “Haul in on that
line!” I supposed that the order referred to me and the hawser lying at
my side. So I hauled with all my might. I felt at first some
resistance--something like a tugging at the other end. I hauled all the
harder. Then something seemed to give way. It hauled easier. I heard,
coincident with these sensations, a splash, loud cries, much swearing
and the yell of “Man overboard!” I raised my head over the bulwarks and
there was my mate, floundering amid dock ooze, rotten oranges, and salt
water. It was he who held the other end of the line, and my hauling had
caused the centre of gravity in his short body to shift beyond the base,
and in accordance with a natural law he had gone overboard. He was the
general cynosure of all eyes. They fished him out, wet and swearing.
There was a vigorous demand for the miscreant who had been hauling on
the line. I was as far as possible from the spot and kept myself very
busy. Bluster went below and changed his clothes. I was avenged.